It's amazing what you find when you search the Internet for poetry news, how many mainstream publications are indeed writing about poetry and the latest dramatic data on eBook and Indie publishing.

  • John Ashberry agrees to a collection of eBooks (New York Times) Ashberry
     
  • Twenty Emerging UK/Ireland Poets (The Guardian)
     
  • Story about the Australian Poet Geoffrey Lehmann  (Yahoo! Australia)
     
  • The American Entomologist Poet’s Guide to the Order of Insects (Entomology Today)
  • Stephen King talks about his Father’s poetry (The Daily Beast)
     
  • Wallace Steven’s Heartford Home Purchased for Residence–with Pics! (The Courant)
     
  • The homeless poet of Brentwood, California dies (West Side Today)
  • The Poetry longlist for the National Book Award (Washington Post)
      
  • Wisconsin Poetry Festival Oct 10-11
        
  • Where have all the poets gone? (NPR): you might worry this article is another clueless piece about the lack of good poets today, especially when it wonders where are all the protest poets these days. It actually does provide a list of the current protest poets and declares they should be on the front lines of culture instead of ghettoized as a subculture: "Did they stop speaking, or have we stopped listening?"
      
  • A Woman’s Epilepsy Medication Turned Her Into a Compulsive Poet (New York Magazine)
      
  •  The 7K Report (AuthorEarnings.com): This is an amazing report from February 2014 which talks about the lack of data on eBook sales and indie publishing, why that data is missing and how one crafty author found a way to download the information from Amazon on author and publishing earnings, broken down by percentages. Although this particular study deals in more popular genres, there are important lessons here for poets. It's shocking not only to see how well indie books rank on Amazon sales lists but how poorly small presses are doing (from just about every angle). The study also tracks the success of a title based on the set price of a book and makes a good argument for more reasonably priced eBooks. The report surmises why the Big 5 publishers overprice their eBooks and how this hurts overall sales. Again, this has implications for poets and their eBooks.
  • 10 Reasons Self Published Authors Will Capture 50 Percent of the Ebook Market by 2020 (The Huffington Post): The creator of Smashwords makes some Indie predictions as well in September 2014.
     
  • The July/August 2014 issue of The Atlantic has an interesting article on the secrets of the creative brain by Nancy C. Andreasen, a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and student of literature. She quotes Shakespeare and John Dryden to illustrate her ideas. She explains the difference between convergent and divergent thinking. The study of creativity tests someone's ability to come up with many divergent responses to probes as opposed to one correct answer, which IQ tests measure. The study also measures the differences between high IQ scores and high creative scores and whether creativity is inherited or nurtured. Creativity tends to run in families and creative thinking might just be a skill one is born with. When studying brain scans, Andreasen found different brain centers lighting up for creative and less-creative people. This may just be the essential part of creative work many teachers declare "can't be taught." 
     
  • More on the Poet’s Forum 2014 conference: Will include a series of short films on New Yorker’s love of their favorite poems, a project connected to Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem project. There will also be panels on publishing, promotion, endangered languages, revision, translation, prose, ekphrastic poetry, and a lecture by Richard Blandco.
     
  • Edward Hirsch's new book of poems, Gabriel, received a rare review in Entertainment Weekly. Unfortunately the eBook is overpriced at this time with $11.84.